Related Companies

Channels

Keywords

European smartphone-only bank Number26 is facing a Twitter backlash after cancelling the accounts of hundreds of customers, many of whom claim to have been given no explanation.

The German-based challenger, which is hoping to cash in on customer dissatisfaction with traditional banks, now operates in seven counties and claims more than 150,000 users.

Yet in the last few weeks the company has begun sending out emails to customers telling them that their accounts have been cancelled and will be closed within two months.

In a statement, Number26 says that the cancellations notices have been sent to a "few hundred" people, adding that "in the context of our fast growth, the number of affected accounts is insignificant".

The firm insists that there is a reason for each closure but that it cannot comment on specific cases for data protection reasons.

But the claim that the closures are just normal practice has been given short shrift on Twitter, where customers are expressing their bemusement and anger.

Comments: (3)

PayPal freezes merchant accounts arbitrarily (from merchants' p.o.v). Now a fintech bank disables customer accounts equally arbitrarily (from customers' p.o.v). This is just early stages of fintechs using Big Data to take highly granular decisions at individual
customer level. But we can't complain: After all, the digerati was exhorting banks to use data. They were daydreaming if they thought fintechs would do it for customer's benefit.